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Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Lindsay Abrams reports at Salon that the Obama administration is offering wind farms 30 years of leeway to kill and harm bald and golden eagles. The new regulations, which were requested by the wind industry, will provide companies that seek a permit with legal protection, preventing them from having to pay penalties for eagle deaths (PDF). An investigation by the Associated Press earlier this year documented the illegal killing of eagles around wind farms, the Obama administration's reluctance to prosecute such cases and its willingness to help keep the scope of the eagle deaths secret. President Obama has championed the pollution-free energy, nearly doubling America's wind power in his first term as a way to tackle global warming. Scientists say wind farms in 10 states have killed at least 85 eagles since 1997, with most deaths occurring between 2008 and 2012, as the industry was greatly expanding. Most deaths — 79 — were golden eagles that struck wind turbines. However the scientists said their figure is likely to be 'substantially' underestimated, since companies report eagle deaths voluntarily and only a fraction of those included in their total were discovered during searches for dead birds by wind-energy companies. The National Audubon Society said it would challenge the decision."

A not altogether unbiased source [eneweconomy.com.au] has a handy comparison of bird deaths between wind, nukes, and fossil fuels. This is the thing all this hoopla about bird deaths on wind farms conveniently overlooks: the number of wildlife deaths from other industries -- how many birds died in the Deepwater Horizon spill, by the way? -- vastly outpaces those from windmills.

Yes, it's sad, and I would like to see them mitigated. But it's the same idiocy that makes people compare three high-speed collisions in Tesla Model S fires to the tens of thousands of fires that happen every year in ICEs with nary a peep.

Can I get a thirty-year exemption on side-effects of killing birds with my windshield?

I don't often go over the 100+ mph that the tip of windmills can attain, but I still find that some birds do deserve it when natural selection happens to them. Like my car, a windmill isn't exactly quiet nor hard to spot.

All they should have to do is paint the blades a color that significantly contrasts the background and place a few streamers on the tips. The spinning blades will appear as a wall when moving fast and a predator when moving slow. Perhaps stripes could make the slow moving blades appear to be more of a threat.

Eagles are off the endangered species lists now. But they are still protected under the migratory bird treaty or something like that.

The blades which are often 125 feet long, do not appear as a solid wall or even as a fast moving thing. They are really quite a surprise to a bird who doesn't anticipate a fast moving target approaching at 90 mph coming from 2:30 position. These blades are stunningly narrow and small in that aspect. It is a deadly swat and done with about 1 second to realize that damage is about to happen. These wind turbines are essentially clear air to the birds and worse yet the approaching low pressure wave probably

Maybe YOU don't want to see a duck get eaten by an eagle at the park, But I can assure you, seeing that happen would totally make my day. Just use it as a 'teachable moment' for your terrified sheltered children.

BP has spent in excess of $20bn to aid cleanup, their executive team got axed, their share price is valued below the sum total value of the company's assets and they are still in the process of one lawsuit after another.

Can I at least ask for some other numbers, such as the number of bird kills resulting from pollutants dumped out by the big coal fired plants in Ohio?

The two greatest killers of birds in the US are feral cats and window panes in tall buildings. I'm not sure, however, that those are particularly dangerous to eagles, of all things. The article is ludicruous, though:

As wind turbines are essentially, if inadvertently, designed to take down eagles

Excuse me? That's like saying that cars are "essentially designed to mow down pedestrians". I mean, really?

Also, while the deaths are regrettable, and if the company was found out not to have taken steps to prevent bird deaths that could have been prevented, they ought to be sanctioned, these two particular bird species are not exactly what one might call endangered.

Well, start with the conservation status of the birds. Both species are rated as "Least Concern" -- which means no identifiable conservation issues.

In the 1950s there were only 412 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the US, due to hunting and DDT. By 1995 they were taken off the endangered lists, and five years ago they were taken off the "threatened" list. By now there are nearly ten thousand breeding pairs in the lower 48. Half of US states have at least 100 breeding pairs.

From an environmental viewpoint it's quite reasonable to stop treating an occasional accidental bald eagle death as some kind of serious event. For healthy population, an individual removed is room for another individual, just as with reasonable levels of deer hunting. Emitting more carbon in order to stop a handful of eagle accidents makes no sense at all.

My concern wasn't "how many birds were killed by whom?" but rather, "Does Obama really have the authority to do this under the law, or is he yet again ignoring/breaking the law to further one of his pet agenda? In that sense the summary wasn't really biased, it just wasn't informative.

The simple rebuttal is that getting people from point A to point B is much more important than your frivolous sensibilities. Now it might be that CO2 is enough of a threat or oil becomes expensive enough to warrant some restructuring of transportation to reduce that.

But to complain because cars weigh only a few dozen times more than the precious cargoes they transport? I can't be bothered to care.

I'm as green as anyone, but lordy that was some one-sided summary Hugh. Can I at least ask for some other numbers, such as the number of bird kills resulting from pollutants dumped out by the big coal fired plants in Ohio?

So why bother with the exemption. If the number is so few, what possible difference can the equally small fine really amount to. If their is concern about wind turbines and bird deaths, couldn't the result of those fines, plus additional funds be put into vertical wind turbines which are far safer and quieter.

One bell doesn't make much noise. Two bells bang together loudly. That's the experience with my cats, anyway. Cats sneak when hunting - if you want the bell to be effective when the cat is trying to be quiet, it'll have to be a constant annoyance to anyone around when the cat isn't sneaking.

Or, put those "deer whistles" on each and every blade...multiple places. Sure, It'd cost millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man hours, but what the hell, that's never stopped the EPA before.

Not antique. Still manufactured by Aermotor Windmills right here in the good old USA, and still the best way to get water out of a well in thousands upon thousands of places. http://www.aermotorwindmill.com/ [aermotorwindmill.com]

I agree with you on the 1Hz sound being extremely unlikely to harm humans a mile away. BUT, bats flying close to the blades can die from internal injuries WITHOUT being hit by the blades-- apparently flying into the low pressure bubble just behind the turbine blade can cause blood vessels to pop in the bat's lungs.

Because, while it may be just "statistical noise" now, what is it going to be when wind power accounts for half (or three quarters) of our electrical need? How many wind turbines do we have now compared to how many we need? How many eagle deaths are you willing to accept?

The oil inudstry where I am kills less birds than the wind farms in the area, and the amount killed by wind farms is already quite small, yet the oil industry is required by law to be fully liable for all bird deaths and must, at their own expense, install countermeadures to drive birds away from hazardous areas (scarecrows, air cannons, supersonic noise makers, etc). Even if only a few dozen birds die in a year, and even though none are endangered they are rightly held fully accountable i

When we don't want to burn fossil fuel, and turn to Nuke, we end up having radioactive waste that can last very very long time.

Yes, but that can be reprocessed and reduced down to almost nothing, and what is left can be placed in double sealed barrels, stored on 6 foot thick concrete platforms raised 20 feet in the air, monitored by video cameras 24/7 posted online so everyone in the world can see they aren't leaking (and scream very loudly if they are).

Stick the barrels out in the middle of the West Texas desert and no one will bother them for 10,000 years.

You can't do that with CO2 and other crap released from burning dead d

My truck weighs 5,700lbs, or about 3 tons. You probably think that is insane. Maybe it is... but it is my right to own it because I like it...

No, it's your right to own it, because you can afford it, and don't believe in taking any personal responsibility for common resources, even when it would not decrease your quality of life (a more sensible car would actually improve your quality of life, most likely).

And Al Gore wants a huge mansion, because he wants one... so you're all over him too, right?

I would be, if I were talking to him. Him being a hypocrite has nothing to do with whether it's moral to own a big truck when you don't really need one.

For what it's worth, my standard on what sized vehicle is in any way justified is the amount of stuff it carries on a regular basis: Landscaper owns a pickup so he can stick all his tools, mowers, leaf blowers, etc in the back? Fine. Software developer owns a pickup so he can feel manly when driving to work? Luxury. Soccer mom owns an SUV to haul around 4 kids all day? Fine. College girl owns SUV because mom and dad think that will make her safer than driving a sedan? Again, luxury. And actually the most virtuous thing for an office worker going to work alone would be a motorcycle, since they can put a Prius to shame in the fuel efficiency department.

So it's not a class thing. What is actually going on is that without carbon taxes, the free market doesn't price the cost of CO2 emissions into pricing, so you don't end up making economic decisions based on it. Of course, if you don't think CO2 emissions matter at all, than nothing I can write about this will move you in any way whatsoever.

If you buy for fuel efficiency, you can put a smug Prius driver to shame. At a very reasonable price. Simple physics explains why: bike+rider is about 700 pounds, car+driver is about 3500 pounds, so you need much less force to move the bike, which more than offsets the less efficient engines and aerodynamics possible on bikes.

This is no joke. While working at a DOE energy lab, one of my coworkers was riding his motorcycle and put into a vegetative state when a teenage girl was texting and plowed into his motorcycle at speed with her SUV. I've also been onsite at DUI crashes within minutes afterwards.

We can argue all day about driving skills, vehicle weight, etc. In 10 years or so, its going to be self-driving cars for everyone, because no insurance company would ever insure a human over refined software and precision sensor pack

The *real* simplest solution is to put the stuff that lasts a Very Long Time, into a Very Deep and Stable Place.

THAT is the simplest solution. Not your fantasy of getting a few billion people to live the backwards lifestyle you won't even accede to yourself (oh wait, that was supposed to apply to you and not just the peasants?).

As someone who just spent the last month with stiff joints, various other extremities issues, little sleep, etc., due to a 68 degree house in a 30 degree outside environment and now has no problems with the temperature at 78 F inside while it's minus 5 F with a blizzard going on outside I say YES!!!!!

Maybe it's because fracking is accused of polluting rivers and water tables, leaking gas, damaging pristine areas, damaging country roads, using massive amounts of water, (encouraging consumption) and triggering earthquakes...Windmills are accused of being ugly (not by me), being noisy, not always turning, and killings birds

Eagles really shouldn't be considered endangered. They're all over the place in Alaska / Canada -to the point where they are essentially a nuisance species (110 dB squawking at 0300 outside your window). The electrocute themselves on powerlines, get run over by cars (because they're stupid and slow) and mostly serve to impress tourists.

There is no perfect solution here. I'm not saying companies should erect wind turbines in the middle of nesting areas, but the truth is, there is no risk-free, cost-free, environmental-damage-free answer to the problem of power production. Coal mining is wretched for the environment and coal miners have a nasty habit of dying of black lung. Nuclear power has risks (and I'm a nuclear proponent). The long-term cleanup and environmental repair is very costly if something goes wrong. Solar power is expensive. Wind turbines kill birds.

At a certain point, the question is "What's an acceptable loss ratio?"

With the advent of the Patriot Act, NDAA, DHS buying billions of hollow point civilian killers ( if civilians were in possesion of these things, they would be labeled cop killers by the policy enforcers), the demise of the American people AND their symbol seems apropos.

That's the traditional definition but recently Biden decided that âoebullets designed to inflict maximum damage.â are cop killer bullets in the recent gun control pushes so it is no wonder why people are confused.

but the truth is, there is no risk-free, cost-free, environmental-damage-free answer to the problem of power production.

It's usually "pick two out of three" when you are given any three factors. In this case, one of the articles assigns a specific value ($600k/year) to the cost of not-killing bald eagles.

and coal miners have a nasty habit of dying of black lung.

This is purely a failure of regulatory oversight.The laws regarding mining ventilation and dust reduction are effective.They were so effective that black lung mostly disappeared as a cause of miners deaths.Black lung has only had a resurgence because mining operations have been cutting costs and intentionally lying to &/

Yes, eagles are important in the eco-system as top-level predators, but they are not the only important thing; they are just "iconic", whatever that means (it probably just means they sell better ). But all part of the environment are important - including conckroaches, rats and intestinal parasites; they are just not so "iconic". It is the balance that is important, the totality.

Humans are also part of the environment, and we are not always harmful. Quite a lot of the landscapes we try to preserve are man-made; humans keep cattle; cattle eat everything over a certain height, opening op the landscape for a large number of small species that would not otherwise survive there, etc.

Also, we are not the only species with a potentially negative impact on the environment; but we do seem to be the only species with the ability to understand the impact we have. And with that understanding comes, of course, the opportunity to make an informed choice. Some would say we have a moral obligation to make the best choice, according to our undestanding.

The local Fish & Wildlife office here in Florida has a freezer in their meeting room that is specifically for storing dead bald eagles, if they ever happen to find one in the wilderness, or if one is killed by a vehicle on the road.

I read the page of instructions of how they are to be handled and preserved, and which agency they call to collect the remains, for them to be distributed to the Native American tribes. Everything was very detailed, which was weird considering they are talking about roadkill.

The environmentalists don't appear to have anyone on their team who understand the amount (or even the magnitude) of the energy consumed globally to make it all work. That, or their desire for renewables is biased by an anti-capitalist desire to collapse the economy. I don't know.

Brass tacks: We need -massive- amounts of energy, we will need even more, and there are two options - hydrocarbons and nuclear.

The governments of the world should all have Manhattan-style projects to solve nuclear fusion

Brass tacks: We need -massive- amounts of energy, we will need even more, and there are two options - hydrocarbons and nuclear.

There's a third option for massive amounts of energy. The gigantic nuclear furnace floating 90 million miles away. It provides more than enough energy for all our needs. It's just a matter of collection. Wind farms are one way of collecting that energy.

So you want to reduce use of fossil fuels? No technology is foolproof. Nuclear has its dangers. Solar energy would occupy acres of animal habitats. EVERYTHING is a tradeoff. The best solution of all is fewer humans. Do you care to sacrifice your ability to reproduce to help those eagles? I didn't think so.

How about a more balanced view? How many eagles would really die? How does that compare to the dangers from CO2, from other technologies? What about the habitat ruined by oil wells, natural gas wells, fracking, etc.? It's really not at all as simplistic as this posting implies.

Don't try to address the summary with reason, it was transparently constructed to paint the president as an anti-environment monster with eagle heads for earrings and face smeared with dolphin blood. I'm not sure who is supposed to be persuaded by the comically over the top phrasing, but it should get some clicks.

The encouragement of NIMBYism to block projects such as nuclear power has only created blowback that basically blocks everything, including projects vital to wind power. Let's take the example of Europe and powerlines [spiegel.de]:

Many projects can't make any headway because numerous citizens' initiatives are blocking things like high-voltage transmission lines... "It took over 30 years before a power line between France and Spain could be built," recalls an expert on the EU Commission... In Germany there are also protests against virtually every major project of the Energiewende

The article offers a ray of hope that Europe might establish a process where permits are granted in three and a half years with only one court about to stop the process:

The EU has also taken a brash course on this front: The proposal would make it possible for the 200 top projects in Europe to receive a construction permit within three and a half years -- with only one court that would hear the objections of project opponents.

Of course imagine the outrage if this short-circuiting of the right of protest and judicial review were granted for other types of energy projects...

Okay, I will probably be modded down for this, but it's worth saying. And for the record, I'm opposed to needlessly killing animals.

The first time I heard about eagles being killed by windmills, I imagined one being cut down while flying from point A to point B, not noticing that there was this lethal windmill in its path. Then, I saw a video on a website of an actual eagle death by windmill (and I apologize for not being able to find & post the link here) and was very surprised bu what I saw. Basically, the eagle was "dancing" with the windmill, repeatedly flying around it over and over. Like a moth flying around a flame. Eventually, the two paths intercepted, and the eagle was hit by the blade.

So part of me wanted to scream "stupid eagle!" and make the natural selection comment. But maybe there is something hypnotic going on that makes the bird want to investigate this strange whirling object?

Maybe a solution to the problem isn't to grant power companies "permits" to kill eagles, but to find a way to repel them rather than attract them.

Not true. Power generating wind turbines have brakes that can stop the blades and the blades can be locked in place. They need those things in order to shut down for maintenance and when winds get too high, otherwise you get this [youtube.com], which is expensive and dangerous.

The brakes can't stop the blades instantly, though, so you couldn't stop them fast enough to avoid a bird collision.

Also, birds are everywhere. They would always in the vicinity unless you're in the middle of the ocean or above 25,000 feet or so

You know, I get associated with right-winged conservatives all the time (probably for good reason), but I found this article stupid, and just another effort to blame the Obama Administration for something else.

Do you have any idea how many wind turbines there are in California alone? Add to that all the wind turbines in Texas, plus all those strung out over the other 37 states that have wind power, and the fact that ONLY 85 eagles have been killed by them over 15 years is a pretty darn low number. I was expecting to read something like 100 per year. (Okay, granted, Texas isn't really the home of bald eagles)

I get it, I am a patriot, and the hearing that any eagle are killed doesn't sit too well with me. But seriously, 85 over 15 years?

How about an article saying how many animals are ALIVE from us going to windpower and reducing the amount of pollutant in the enviornment?

The Obama Administration issuing permits to wind power companies protecting them from prosecution because a bird is stupid enough to fly into a turbine sounds like a logical move to me.

Now if we were talking hundred or more birds killed a year in the same area, the argument could be made to disassemble some turbines in a given area. But these incidents sound pretty remote. The Altaria Wind Farm in California has 490 turbines. (source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org] ). I am too lazy to go and look at how many turbines there are total near eagle nesting area, but once again, the numbers reported are really low. (The article does state though that not all deaths are reported, so I can accept that hese numbers may be higher).

Now if the poster can think of a way to get clean energy without any side effects, please tell us, and we will consider you for a Nobel Prize.

If you took down every single wind mill in the world tomorrow, humanity would not really even notice for most part. At worst, we may have to start using some of the mothballed coal/oil/gas plants to compensate.

And even "I'm so high I think I can walk across oceans" level of babbling would probably not try to claim that wind power is a "question of survival of human civilization".

but the wind-farms are a question of survival of the human civilization.

Hardly. If windfarms dropped off the face of the earth, you might need to find 1-3% from somewhere else, like hydro plants sitting idle, or from nuclear reactors which have been shutdown or furloughed for maintenance. Hell, in Ontario we produce so much electricity that we sell it at a 75% loss to the US, and we're not even at peak generating capacity. In fact, these "green energy" programs [ctvnews.ca] are going to drive up our electricity prices by 42% in the next 5 years. [canadiancontent.net]